DEAR PET LADY,

I desperately need your advice concerning my cat Macy. She’s 9 months old and has this nasty habit of waking up literally the same moment I want to go to sleep. As I lay my head down on the pillow, Macy begins to stir. A half hour into dreamland, and she starts flying around the apartment! She does these funky karate moves that are skillfully played out in a matter of milliseconds. She’s fast. And as quick as she is, her actions nevertheless create the perfect conditions to startle me awake. The other problem I deal with on a nightly basis is that she pounces up onto the couch I sleep on (I’m unemployed, possess a college degree, and can’t find work—thus the couch belonging to a friend dear enough to put me up). There’s hardly enough room for me on the couch, let alone a spastic cat. She loves to purr like a diesel engine while ramming her head into my neck and kneading obsessively in a trance state. What can I do?

Sleepless in Seattle

DEAR SLEEPLESS IN SEATTLE,

Let us call you, say, Unwillingly Wakeful in Seattle, shall we? Without even having seen it, the Pet Lady detests the (and she uses the term loosely) film from which your nom de plume derives. And whilst we are addressing matters of diction, may the P.L. gently admonish you for using the word “spastic” in jest? Yes, she may: Spasticity is not funny, dear Wakeful (though the word is a tiny bit, isn’t it?), and as you are the proud possessor of a college degree, we may perhaps agree upon calling small Macy anti-enervated, or over-invigorated, or all wound up like an insane little fur alarm clock.

Please also do allow the Pet Lady to chastise herself, as she has just now found your urgent letter of late January behind the liquor cabinet. The P.L. deeply regrets this inexplicable delay in responding to your desperate plea for help and hopes you have not gone mad from sleep deprivation in the intervening weeks. Indeed, perhaps you have found gainful employ during this time and now have a bedroom with a door that you may shut with Macy on the other side of it, which would be an ideal solution to your difficulty, Unwillingly Wakeful. Should your status as a human of leisure as well as couch sleeping persist, however, you might try the time-honored soporific of the unemployed, that is, large quantities of inexpensive malt beverage; this tactic would render your startle threshold so low as to be negligible, and it’s not as if you have anything pressing to do in the a.m., now, is it?

Best to you and Macy, and happy spring!

The Pet Lady

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